MERRILL, MI — There are some things coaches can't beat with a game plan or brilliant strategy.

In Thursday's Class C girls basketball regional championship game at Merrill, Nouvel Catholic Central center Rachel McInerney was one of those things.

McInerney scored 14 points with 10 rebounds and five blocked shots to lead the Panthers to a 55-34 win over Kent City to improve to 23-2 and move on to the quarterfinals for the second consecutive year.

"No. 30 (McInerney) was dominant," Kent City coach Scott Carlson said. "She was dominant on both ends of the court, offensively and defensively. We couldn't stop her.

"I probably should have gone away from a man defense to a zone, but that's hindsight. We're a man-to-man team, but we needed to do something to stop her."

The win sends Nouvel to the Class C quarterfinal game at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Ithaca High School against 21-4 Delton-Kellogg.

"We knew we had good matchups inside with Rachel, Taylor (Hengesbach) and Nicole (Buckingham), and we wanted to take advantage of that," Nouvel CC coach Kris Hengesbach said. "They didn't have the size or speed to match up with us inside."

Not everything, however, was perfect in Nouvel's post-up world. McInerney was 2-for-12 from the free-throw line.

"She's a better free-throw shooter than that ... she's just struggling right now," Hengesbach said. "It's something you think about, but she's a very mature person. She'll work it out. I'm not worried about her."

Freshman Laurel Jacqmain, however, picked up the slack for Nouvel. Jacqmain also scored 14 points, making 8 of 9 from the line.

Hengesbach finished with 10 points.

"We wanted to run, we wanted to score in transition ... we were able to do that," Kris Hengesbach said. "Their press didn't really bother us. I didn't expect it to. We were able to get some points off it."

Brandi Boehm led the 20-4 Eagles with nine points.

Nouvel led 10-2 after one quarter, 15-8 at halftime.

"We just got off to such a bad start ... we played a lot closer after halftime and had a few runs that cut into their lead," Carlson said. "It's just unfortunate that we didn't play our best game."

Nouvel's defense had something to do with it.

"We knew they were a 3-point shooting team, so we worked really hard on getting out on their shooters," Kris Hengesbach said. "I was the most proud of how much we talked on defense. They set a lot of screens, a lot of picks to get their shooters opened.

"They had some very long possessions where they set picks and tried to get an open shot. We just kept talking, just kept working."

Novuel was 20 of 35 from the floor, 13 of 28 from the line. Kent City made 11 of 38 from the floor, 6 of 10 from the line. Of the Eagles' 11 field goals, six were 3-pointers.

"We played hard all year ... it's what we do," Carlson said. "It wasn't just games that these girls played hard ... they got after it in practice too. It's just unfortunate it had to end for us here."